ALEC Board of Scholars

The ALEC Board of Scholars includes :


 * Kay Coles James - President and Founder of the Gloucester Institute; and formerly Senior Fellow and Director of "The Citizenship Project" at the Heritage Foundation, Dean of the School of Government at Regent University, Secretary of Health and Human Resources for former Virginia Governor George Allen (where she implemented Virginia's controversial welfare reform initiative), Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management during George W. Bush's administration, Senior Vice President of the Family Research Council, Associate Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during George H.W. Bush's administration, member of the National Commission on Children during Ronald Reagan's administration, and Boardmember of Focus on the Family


 * Arthur B. Laffer - Inventor of the "Laffer Curve," often called "the father of supply-side economics," Co-chair of the Policy Council for the Free Enterprise Fund, a lobbying organization founded by Stephen Moore and other Club for Growth members; and formerly member of the Economic Policy Advisory Board during Ronald Reagan's administration and active in his 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns, and Chief Economist at the Office of Management and Budget during Richard Nixon's administration


 * Stephen Moore - Founder of the Club for Growth and member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board who has been called "a voodoo economist"; and formerly: Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee under Chairman Dick Armey (TX) and Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Budgetary Affairs at the Heritage Foundation.


 * Victor Schwartz - Partner at the Washington D.C. offices of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, LLP -- a law and lobbying firm that has represented big tobacco companies such as Philip Morris (now Altria Group), big pharmaceutical companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline, and big technology companies such as Sprint Nextel, Microsoft and Sony. He has been very active in the arena of tort reform and has been called "the undisputed king of tort reform." Terry Carter Piecemeal Tort Reform, ABA Journal, December 2001 and considered one of Washington, D.C.'s 50 top lobbyists; Formerly a lawyer and lobbyist at Crowell & Moring for 21 years; Director of the Federal Insurance Administration from 1978-1980, and a professor and dean at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.


 * Richard Vedder - Economics professor at Ohio University, and Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute and theAmerican Enterprise Institute; and formerly a commentator for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy on such issues as spending on public schools,, for the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution on issues such as immigration and labor, and Board member of the National Taxpayers Union.


 * Bob Williams - Founder and Senior Fellow of the Freedom Foundation-- previously known as the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a libertarian organization whose mission "is to advance individual liberty, free enterprise, and limited, accountable government"-- Board Member of the State Policy Network and a "visiting fellow" at the Mercatus Center; and formerly an auditor for the Pentagon and Post Office, and a five term state legislator in Washington State.

Scholars' Connections to Charles and David Koch

 * Kay Coles James previously worked at the Heritage Foundation, which has received funding from the Koch Family Foundations.


 * Arthur B. Laffer’s Laffer Center for Global Economic Growth is tied to Koch Industries through its Vice Chairman, Richard Fink, and Executive Director Wayne Gable -- both prominent Koch executives -- and a $100,000 grant from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation in 2009.


 * Stephen Moore previously worked at the Cato Institute, which was co-founded by Charles G. Koch and has been largely funded by the Koch Family Foundations, and also at the Heritage Foundation, which has been funded by Koch money.


 * Bob Williams is a visiting fellow with George Mason University’s Mercatus Center State and Local Policy Project, a Charles Koch-funded project, to the tune of over $9 million since 2002.